A Chinese American's Perspective

Tuesday, December 25, 2018

It so happened that they arrived in New York City on Christmas Eve, three years after US-China diplomatic normalization. It was an unplanned date for those exchange students, the first bunch in more than three decades. Beckoned by extraterrestrially lighted trees on the oddly named 42nd Street, three of the students, two boys and one girl, stepped out from the Chinese Consulate's moldy guesthouse against warnings. They came upon a 24-hour store and went in. Picking out a Boston map, priced $2, one of the newcomers hesitantly handed the cashier—owner? —a $20 bill, still warm with his body heat. It was a huge bill, one-third of their monthly food allowance. But none of them had anything smaller—American currency was so new to them it was still a mystery, as was English the new language. As the student and his friends silently waited for his change, the proprietor came around the counter, chanting, "Ho ho ho, Merry Christmas," and cheerfully steered them out.

Tuesday, December 18, 2018

1.
By the time middle schools finally resumed classes, three years of complete freedom had turned my cohort—who’d last sat in a fourth-grade classroom—into a herd of wild things. There was never a moment of quiet when we sat down at our desks. High-pitched talking mingled in the air with the low burr of voices, but a careful observer could see two parallel streams not crossing, as no dialogue took place between the girls and the boys.

The Cultural Revolution was entering its fourth year. Rampant violence had crested a year earlier, but there were still no books to read. Boys I didn’t much care about (not yet); they were just a species with shorter hair. But the dearth of books—that was like roasting my brain in a hot wok.

Monday, December 4, 2017

In May 2012, a stranger contacted me through my website. A professor of cultural psychology at Hampshire College, Q.M. Zhang was interested in talking about Chongqing, the city I grew up in. What triggered her request for a meeting, apparently, was my article titled “Another Kind of American History in Chongqing,” which had appeared on the Atlantic website the previous year. She was writing a memoir about her relationship with her father, who had worked for the Kuomintang (aka the KMT or the Nationalists, the ruling party of China from 1928 to 1949) in Chongqing during WWII.

By contrast, my own parents were underground Communists in the 1940s. So her father and mine, though unknown to each other, had literally been enemies in the same city. (Read the rest of my review on LARB China Channel)

Saturday, August 19, 2017

A group of my Chinese American friends and I joined Boston's counter-protest today, because we feel that increasing racism, encouraged by Donald Trump, has become a significant and ever-dangerous trend in America. We were all outraged by Heather Heyer's murder a week ago, and shocked that Nazis could openly stage such a comeback. Is this America?? Is this still the America we immigrated to?

So as soon as we heard about the so-called "free-speech rally" in Boston, we felt the need to show the world that we are with the majority of Bostonians who have no tolerance for bigotry and hatred. "作为少数族裔，我感到义不容辞，需要现身表明立场" — "As a minority member, I feel duty-bound to show up and take a clear stand," was how one friend put it.

A little after eleven this morning, when my friends and I arrived at Boston Common, the police had fenced out a large area around Parkman Bandstand (see photos below). From a distance, only a few, hardly discernible small shadows could be seen on the Bandstand stage; otherwise the protected area was completely deserted. And so the scene of a sea of counter-protesters —thousands? tens of thousands? —outside the fence looking into a largely empty ring was kind of funny, but in a good way. Apparently, the police were determined to make an effective firebreak between the right wing speakers and counter-protesters, but with the unexpectedly tiny size of bushfire, the firebreak seemed oversized. It worked though. Where were the thousands of attendees the so-called "free speech rally" organizers said would be there? Had their rally petered out before it even began?

Some of us thought those racists might show up at noon, the scheduled time of their "event," and that would be our time to confront them. A few minutes before noon, I managed to squeeze through the counter-protesters to a gap in the temporary fence, in time to see an array of policemen walking out. I asked one of them if more of the "free speech" guys were going to arrive. "That's it," he said, refereeing to the sparse grouping of figures on the stage.

Later, after the "event" ended early, before 1 pm instead of the scheduled time of 2 pm, I asked another policeman guarding the Common how many people were there; he said about two dozen from the "free speech" side, and 25k counter protesters. I asked why he thought so few of the former party showed up.

"Because they are idiots," the police said with apparent scorn.

I was actually not that surprised by the faltered "free speech rally." Yesterday, a friend had found this on Facebook:

What does this mean? Go figure.

So the counter-protest, for which we had worried about Charlottesville-like violence, turned out to be a largely fun outing. Here are a few anecdotes from today.

Shortly after walking into the Common, we heard a thunderous chanting echoed by what must have been thousands of people: "Fuck Donald Trump! Fuck Donald Trump!"

One of us, a photographer, saw a number of men who claimed they were "free speech" members and wanted to join those on the stage. Police guarding the entrance told them their names were not on the list given by the organizer, and refused to let them through the fence. Our photographer followed those guys, escorted by police, moving around the big circle, and saw that at every entrance they met with rejection.

My husband, an American who had lived in Canada in his youth years, was dismayed to see a Canadian flag on the Bandstand. Some Canadians came to Boston to be racists? He wondered aloud.

People were booing someone waving a Sickle-Hammer Soviet flag. It was too far from where I stood and I could only see the flag swinging in air. Couldn't figure out the motivation of the flag-holder.

At one point, the crowd before us cheered loudly. I then heard that someone had turned on the sprinkler in one area of the Common, and a few "free speech" members passing through got a free shower.

An old couple, who held an American flag and said they supported Trump, were arguing with some counter-protesters. I got there at the end of the arguments, when the old couple were leaving. A bystander who looked like had been in the service was helping the old lady, carefully and correctly folding her flag for her so that she could carry it more easily.

Here are more photos from today, some taken by myself, some by my friends. I got a kick out of the many creative signs.

Sunday, August 13, 2017

Just saw in a Reddit discussion an interesting comment related to my post "On Ezra Pound’s Translation of Ancient Chinese Poetry" (this is an example where the pronoun "he" is blatantly wrong in a comment, but the commentator still makes a good and on topic point 😊) .

Here is the gist of the comment (emphasis mine):

This is an example where one of the poets is blatantly wrong in his translation, but he is still the best poet out of all of them. Even though the blogger tried to come up with his own style that is above the other two, he misses out on a lot of the subtle modernist poetic rhythms that Pound pulls in his. Pound, of course, misses out on the folk-song repetitive & rhymey quality of the original, but makes up for it in his skill.
For example, in the first line of Pound’s poem, he builds up softer sound through “picking the first fern-shoots”, and uses more ‘o’s when the later part comes. The 3rd translation has the rhyme, but lacks this nuance. Pound’s version is lingering throughout because of his superb manipulation of sounds.

Friday, July 28, 2017

Translating the Atlantic's cover stories into Chinese is a project that my friends and I started in March, motivated by a feeling of responsibility to help serious journalism reach a broader audience. In today's internet jungle that can readily swallow (and has swallowed many) uninformed readers, there are time-honored trustworthy publications that stand out by providing people with truth and perspective, and the Atlantic is one of those.

Fortunately, our attempt received support from the Atlantic's editorship led by John Gould, who had the courage and foresight to let us start this experiment. Since then, our translations have been widely praised by readers; people are saying things like "翻译得真的很好，感觉不到翻译“ （meaning: "the translation is so good it does not feel like a translation"), "非常流畅的译笔" ("very fluent translation "), and "译文像是中文书写的一样" ("the translation is like ​original Chinese writing").

Some of our work, such as the translations of "How to Build Autocracy" and "My Family's Slave​,​" has generated a huge readership, and stayed on top of theatlantic.com's "Popular" list for weeks. We are very encouraged and truly appreciative of the editors, supporting staff, and readers. We have worked hard, and the project has been intellectually rewarding.

Here's the list of our translations so far, in reverse-chronological order:

Tuesday, March 28, 2017

I'm fascinated by the assertion in Walter Benjamin's "The Task of the Translator" (in Theories of Translation) that "No poem is intended for the reader, no picture for the beholder, no symphony for the listener." Is this a philosophic contemplation, or the writer's belief of the highest state of art, or his belief of reality? He seems to be using this as a premise to derive a conclusion that, because the original art doesn't take the receiver into consideration, the translation can't either.

However, there exist several different approaches to translation, as pointed out in "On the Different Methods of Translating" by Schleiermacher. As far as I can tell, the need for more than one approach arises precisely due to the consideration of the receiver. Creation of art, in my view, is complete only after the receiver receives the art. In other words, art is co-created by the author and the receiver. Without the receiver, there is no art.

I would think that, in most cases, the aimed readership dictates the translation method. One example I'd like to cite is the Chinese translation of Finnegans Wake, which I've talked about before. I was visiting China when the translation was published, and I went to a bookstore to see what the book looked like. On each page there are more footnotes than text proper. This, clearly, is not meant for casual readers. The translator said in an interview that "I thought my readers would be scholars and writers." In this example, a scholarly, academic style was chosen. When I translate Chinese literature into English or vice versa, I would definitely consider my target readership's cultural exposure in regard to the source language. Is this not the right way to approach a translation?

Even were I to accept Benjamin's premises for art and literature in general, the above example convinces me his conclusion does not apply to translation. While translation is a creative and artful process, the very act of translation requires that the art has already been received. Moreover, the people who receive the translation want to do so often because they believe there is something special, based on the reactions of others who have already received it. A key motive of the translator is to have translation receivers share the experience, though necessarily in approximation, of the direct receivers, whether it be lyrical, sensual or intellectual (or all three).

So even if Benjamin is right about art, his claims do not seem to translate. 😃

Monday, January 30, 2017

min words | max heart

At first our city’s two Red Guard factions engaged in “civilized struggle”—using brush pens and words, big-character posters and leaflets, high-pitched broadcast and public debates, loud diatribes and, occasionally, fists to attack each other—until one side started to frequently parade the streets, shouting insulting and damaging slogans such as “Blah-blah is doomed,” and that nettled the nerve of the said faction, middle and high school and college students who had successfully forced the city government to stop classes, so they could carry on the Cultural Revolution, and so they charged into the city’s firehouses, where fire-fighters had been told not to resist the Red Guards, filled fire engines with sewage from big cesspools of communal toilets, drove to the streets, and sprayed their parading opponents—who might have been able to stand up against water cannons but ended up fleeing helter-skelter from the overwhelming foul smell—making the streets stink for days, so badly that stores stayed closed. That was how piss and shit and fire engines became the first real weapon in our city’s “armed struggle,” preceding steel rods and spears, which would, in turn, be replaced by rifles, machine guns, tanks, even warships, all supplies from arsenals stocked to aid Vietnam’s resistance of the U.S., and when those weapons drew blood we’d hear stories such as friends of an injured student tying a towel below his leg wounds, a first-aid method they thought they had learned from war movies, until the boy shed all his blood and stopped breathing.

Thursday, January 26, 2017

(Note: Zhao Gao (258-207BC) was the highest official under the Second Emperor of the Qin Dynasty.)

[in translation]

Aspiring to gain complete control of power, and anxious that others might not obey him, Zhao Gao set up a test. He led a deer to the emperor and said, "This is a horse." The emperor laughed. "Are you mistaken? Calling a deer a horse?" When the emperor asked the other officials in the court, some remained silent, some followed Zhao to say the deer was a horse, and some said it was a deer. Zhao then back-stabbed those who said the deer was a deer, causing them to be punished under the law. From that day forward everyone feared Zhao and repeated his alternative fact.

Friday, January 20, 2017

I will join Boston Women's March tomorrow, but I feel the need to do something on this Friday as well. Not watching anything live on TV–I couldn't stand it. So I am posting a flash fiction piece I wrote right after Election Day, 2016. I did not post it then, because I was held back by my outrage, disbelief, sorrow, anger, loathing, disappointment, anguish, disgust, trepidation, yet clinging to the constant wishful thought that something would happen to stop the catastrophe, to settle into a resolution.

But settle it never did. I don't know how we, Americans, got into this muddle. It has started to feel like 1966, in China. That was also a regime with broad, in fact much broader, popular support.

It doesn't take a sophisticated mind to see how wrong it is to let Trump get into the White House. The following story is not one of reason or morality; it simply reflects the emotions of an ordinary mother, emotions many of my friends experienced.

How to Be a Good Parent in 2016

Xujun Eberlein

You have told your 8-year-old son not to watch TV, but you are intent on seeing the first presidential debate, so you allow him to sit by you on the couch for an hour and a half before going to bed.

You have taught your son not to interrupt when others are speaking; on the TV screen the red-faced man cuts off his opponent at will, or otherwise hovers around to intimidate her.

You have again told your son not to watch TV, but you are anxious to see the second presidential debate, so you allow him to sit by you for 60 minutes.

You have taught your son that America is a democratic country which, unlike China, doesn't hold citizens as political prisoners; on the screen the red-faced man is threatening to send his opponent to jail.

You know you can't tell your son not to watch TV again when the third presidential debate begins, so you allow him to sit by you for 30 minutes.

You have taught your son that people in America, regardless of their ethnicity, race or gender, are all equal; on the screen the red-faced man calls immigrants "bad hombres" and, a while later, squeezes two fierce words out of his fat lips to the other candidate, "Nasty woman."

After that you can no longer be noncommittal in your comments, so you tell your son this man is unfit to be the American President, and he nods hard. "This man will not be elected," you say, and he replies, "FR."

The evening of November 8th, you don't turn on the TV until your son falls asleep. You turn off the TV at midnight. Then you stay awake through the long dark night, having no idea what to say to your son in the morning. #

Thursday, December 22, 2016

After the recent Trump-Taiwan phone call, a piece of old
"news" got fried hot again: this one claims that Trump has read
hundreds of books about China, and revealed his top list of twenty in an
"interview" with Xinhua, China's official news agency. "Trump's China book list" went viral in cyberspace to show that the
President-elect of the United States isn't that ignorant. Chinese bloggers and cyber
surfers alike cite confidently the LA
Times as the source of this "news."

But it so happened that two rumor-wary friends, Victor and Zhang Tuomu, both Chinese Americans with a Peking University education, had read in the July 25 issue of the New Yorker ("Donald Trump's Ghostwriters Tells All") that Trump doesn't actually read
books. Suspicious of this "Trump's China book list," the two did some digging, and Zhang Tuomu published
their fact-checking results three days ago on a WeChat publication titled
"反海外谣言中心" ("The Overseas Anti-Rumor Center"). The article, written mostly in Chinese, is now
also circulating online, for example here.

The gist of it is that they found no Xinhua report on the
said interview with Trump, but discovered the following instead:

On April 26, 2011, a commercial PR website,
newswire.com, published a "press release" titled "Donald Trump's Favorite Chinese Books." It came from "China Books,"
said to "Specialize in retail and distribution of western-published books
in Mainland China." (This is strange, because the "Trump's China book
list" shown in this "press release" contains many books banned
in China.)

On May 3, 2011, a report titled "Donald Trump has read a lot of books on China: 'I understand the Chinese mind'"
appeared on the website of LA Times;
the piece cites the content of the above commercial "press release"
as actual news, apparently without fact checking. (Victor actually checked with
the journalist, Tony Pierce, who verified that his "news" indeed came
from newswire.com.)

On May 4, 2011, Beijing's Xinhuanet.com cited the
LA Times report (see the irony? LAT says Xinhua said it first; Xinhua
says LAT said it first) on Trump's
book list, without mentioning the sensitive book titles.

From then on, the LA Times
became the official source of "Trump's China book list" in Chinese
internet articles.

By now we have all seen that the presidential election this year was glutted with fake news and baseless rumors, on a scale I've never seen in my 28+ years living in the United States. And so, in the scheme of things, the case we see here doesn't seem to be a big deal. What surprised—and disappointed—me is the role of the LA Times in this fake news promulgation, considering that, just the day after the election, I had tweeted with a sense of urgency and confidence:

I might also add that, the latest popularity
of this "news" seems to have been stimulated by VOA's columnist, Han Lianchao, "a visiting fellow
at the renowned American think tank Hudson Institute" (this title seems to
shine an authoritative halo to VOA's Chinese audience), who unsuspiciously mentioned the "book list" on December 4th when discussing Trump's China policy. Han
said "据报道"
– "as reported" – without specifying the source, but I wouldn't be
surprised if he had seen the LA Times
report, or the citing of it in Chinese cyberspace. Han might not be a New Yorker reader, and I don't blame him
for his trust in LAT, because I
trusted the paper too. That is, before this episode.

Now I can almost hear a furious rebuttal: You can't say it
is the LAT! It is just one reporter writing a blog post! I totally agree, in fact I have been following
a few real good journalists there, such as Barbara Demick, and in my mind they represent
the LAT I liked and trusted. But let's also face the inconvenient reality: when people quote the fake news, they say "LA Times reported that," they don't
care who the particular reporter is or which part of the LAT website published it.

Btw, one thing that is still unclear to me is the motive for
the 2011 "press release" placed on newswire.com. If it was a publicity stunt from a
book dealer, which appears most likely, then why did it give a contact address
in China? Many of the books listed are not
allowed to be sold there. We probably shouldn't rule out another possibility: it
might have been a political stunt
from … (add your guess here). If so, the irony is that the fake news has taken five
years to ferment, in a now unpresidented
political climate.

Saturday, December 10, 2016

Today Bob and I attended Jay Forrester's memorial service at the Trinity Episcopal Church in Concord. Jay was the founder of System Dynamics and Bob's mentor at MIT. Jay was also the inventor of magnetic core memory—the earliest widely used computer memory. (See the great man's obituary in New York Times, which was written before his death, with his approval.)

Beyond all that, Jay had a much more personal impact on my life. Twenty nine years ago, Bob was teaching System Dynamics in Shanghai, and I was studying it in Chengdu. Our first encounter in spring 1987 thus was an unintended gift from Jay.

When Jay was a young inventor of computer memory (1951)

Who'd have thought that Jay, even after his death, would give me another surprise? Today's otherwise completely traditional service took one digression from beautiful Christian hymns: we all stood and sang "Home on the Range" with the church's choir. Jay's children said this was a song Jay loved, and wanted to be sung in his service. Bob was amazed that I, who didn't know the other songs, was utterly at home with this one. I don't know who the Chinese translator of its lyrics was, but in the 1970s, for many of us "zhi-qings" (also called "sent-down youths"), the song had accompanied and consoled our homesick hearts through long days and nights in the countryside far away from home.

My eyes were wet when I softly sang the Chinese words I remembered from my youth—words I was surprised to still remember after all these years—they mingled harmoniously with others' English rendition. The words and music are so dear, intimate, nostalgic, that I've lost the ability to judge the translation.

Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam Where the deer and the antelope play Where seldom is heard a discouraging word And the skies are not cloudy all day Home, home on the range Where the dear and the antelope play Where seldom is heard a discouraging word And the skies are not cloudy all day

This is a genuine work of literature. The two stories I remember most are "Feathers" and "Pivot Point." The former is a devastating portrait of family loss, the latter, a haunting illustration of longing. In several of these stories is a protagonist who really establishes herself as a sort of feminist hero, a young woman at once happier as "just one of the guys" and critical of the way they treat women, including herself. An additional pleasure is the way the stories get the cognitive faculties working: suddenly the reader will come across two characters debating a mathematician's theorem, or a substantive quote by Confucius. Eberlein has a poet's eye, giving us the image of two birds on a wire when we don't expect it, and it's these unexpected moments--many of them image-based, some of them dramatic--which the reader remembers vividly. At the heart of Eberlein's craft is a finely tuned and inimitable sense of language. "I want to travel with you to every mountain, every water, I told him," and that use of "water" is le mot juste. To read these powerful works by Eberlein is a great privilege.

Wednesday, November 2, 2016

I just can't imagine Trump as the President of the United States. Hillary Clinton might not be the best candidate, but Trump is the worst I've seen. He has demonstrated a fundamental lack of understanding of democracy. (Update: Obama did not overstate when he warned that "The fate of the world is teetering.")

I'd also like to point out the fact that many Chinese Americans are against Trump. See for example https://www.facebook.com/ca4ba/ (update: the name of the FP page has been changed after the election day).

Thursday, July 28, 2016

For
both Bob and me, the trip to Berlin two weeks ago was a first time. It started well. Upon our arrival on Tuesday evening, we took
a walk in the cool breeze, along the cobblestone streets outside the hotel,
passing by leisurely locals here and there in groups of two or three. I sent a WeChat message to Chinese friends in
Boston (in translation): "Unlike the deserted evenings in American suburbs,
Europe's dusk is enchanting." In that message I had likened Berlin to some
other Western European cities I visited a few years earlier.

My
event the next day, a panel discussion titled "Engaging with China,"
also went well. My fellow panelists and
our German host are very knowledgeable about China, and I was glad to get to
know them. The audience was enthusiastic and thoughtful about the topic of the
Cultural Revolution, and this, including the participation of some younger people
from mainland China, gave me hope.

Things
made an unexpected turn on Thursday. Originally Bob and I had planned to join a
6-hour walking tour recommended by a fellow panelist, but, being jetlagged, I
slept in and missed the meeting time. So
we changed plan and decided to take the train to visit Potsdam.

Shortly
before noon, we walked to the Alexanderplatz train station. It was an overcast
day and the temperature had dropped to below 20ºC. I felt cold in short sleeves, and so went
into a souvenir shop to buy a sweatshirt. At the cashier's counter I saw that
they were also selling the Berlin WelcomeCard, "the official Berlin tourist ticket." I had heard of this card before and
the convenience of using one ticket for all public transportation in town made it seemingly
a great idea. We asked the cashier if the WelcomeCard included the train to
Potsdam, and she said yes, so we gladly bought me a three-day card for 29.50 Euro
and Bob, who was going to leave Berlin one day earlier, a two-day card for
21.50 Euro.

A
few minutes later Bob and I boarded an S-train to Potsdam, looking forward to a
day of interesting tourist experience. Before the train reached its second or third
stop, a man with a scanner in hand came to check tickets. Bob gave him our WelcomeCards. The man looked at the cards, paused, and told
us he needed to ask someone something. He then took our cards and walked toward
the other end of the train.

I
said to Bob, "Something wrong?" and Bob, being a forever optimist,
replied, "I don't think so."

The
man with our cards returned just when the train came to a stop. He told us that
our WelcomeCards were invalid. We'd have to go with him.

Surprised
and suspicious, we followed him off the train.
On the platform were three men in dark-colored jackets dealing with a
young couple who looked like tourists. Seeing
us, one of the men walked over. His sturdy
figure posed intimidatingly before the 5'2" me; for a moment I wondered if
we were running into some kind of mafia.
He took the cards from our escort and, with a cat-caught-mouse like triumphant
smile, demanded ferociously, "Sixty euro each. One hundred twenty
total." His English had an accent that did not sound like from a German.

"Why
should we pay you? Who are you?" Bob said.

"Give
me your ID," another rude voice said. The other two men had joined the
show.

"Let
us see yours first," Bob replied.

One
by one, the men took their IDs out of their pockets and flashed to us. I tried to take one for a closer look, and
the man said "No!" A quick
glance told us that the language on the IDs was German, unrecognizable to us
anyway. Yet one thing was clear: the men were not police. In their dark
jackets and humiliating expressions, all three looked like thugs to me. But this was in a public space of a
democratic country, under broad daylight, even though the train had left us
alone with those men, even though the sky was overcast.

"What
happens if we don't pay you?" I
said, evaluating possible options as a writer would. It might not have been the
smartest thing to say in the circumstance, because the triumphant smile was
disappearing from the first man's face.

"Then
we have to call the police," he threatened.

"Yes,
call the police!" Without coordination, Bob and I said in unison. We had the same thoughts: only police could check those men's identity.
That is, unless the police were their co-conspirators, a highly unlikely circumstance.

"You
are not going to have our passports until we hear from the police," Bob
added.

The
three men looked at each other. Their humiliating
manner gave way to a look of surprises. After a moment, one man walked aside to
make a cellphone call.

We
waited. For about ten minutes nothing
happened, during which one man tried to play the nice guy. "You are not
the only ones," he said. "Did you see the other couple? Many tourists are caught like you, you'll
just have to pay."

He
said that, after one purchases a WelcomeCard, an extra step has to be taken to
validate it on a specialized meter. It is to prevent people from trying to use the
card forever.

"Then
why did no one tell us this?" I said.

"It
is your own responsibility as a tourist to inform yourself," he said,
sounding like a recorder. He must have recited the same line numerous times by
now. I began to suspect that they were not thugs but hired guns.

"Where is the meter?" I asked.

He
pointed to some device on the platform.

"Then
give us back the cards. We'll go
validate them now," I said.

"No,"
he said. "You must pay the fine first!"

The
man who had been making calls came back to say the police wouldn't come.

"We
can go to the police with you," Bob offered.

It
must have been the first time those men ran into such tough prey. They hesitated. Their hesitation made us more suspicious.

"We
can't force you to go to the police," one advised.

"We
are going voluntarily," Bob said.

We
took a train in the opposite direction back to the main station, and followed the
guys to a police office. One guy spoke German to a police officer for a long
time. The officer went to find a
different officer who could speak English.
The English-speaking officer verified the train line's policy that
anyone who didn't validate the WelcomeCard would be fined for 60 Euro.

That
was how a Berlin WelcomeCard became a Berlin UnwelcomeCard. At this point, the
card felt like a trap for unsuspicious tourists.

I
tried to point out to the police officer that we had just bought the cards minutes
before running into those men, that we had no idea about the validation
requirement, and the fine was an insult.

"I
am sorry. This is the way things are here. A person can cheat and use the card
for a long time."

The
officer was fairly polite and did not quite point a finger at us, but both Bob
and I felt deeply insulted for being treated as thieves. Yet there was no point
in arguing any further. Bob simply handed 120 euros to the sturdy guy, who
seemed a bit surprised by it. He gave us receipts and, for the first time,
tried to make a friendly gesture. "You can return the unused WelcomeCards,"
he suggested. We ignored him and walked out.

We
boarded the S-train again and headed to Potsdam, but the good mood was broken. The
ride was less than an hour. In Boston,
the commuter rail for that length cost US$6.50. We never asked what an actual
train ticket would cost to Potsdam had we not bought the Berlin UnwelcomeCards
in the first place. What was the point
to find out, after we had spent 171 Euro for that trip?

As
we toured the Sanssouci and other palaces in the afternoon, I was often mind
absent. From time to time the
humiliating scenes on the train platform and the police station replayed in my head. Those men in dark jackets never
explicitly told us which organization they were working for; it was our guess
that they were hired by the railway company. According to them, they had gotten
many foreign tourists the same way they got us. But why would Berlin's railway
company use this way to humiliate tourists, to make people's visits a bitter
experience?

I
recalled that, nearly three decades ago, when I just immigrated to the United
States, the honor system of the US public transportation surprised me in a big
way. It was a sharp contrast to the China I came from, which treated every
citizen as some sort of suspect. In the US, everyone was trusted to pay their own
fare honestly. I was a poor student
then; if I wanted to I could have easily cheated on bus fare in Boston. But I didn't.
The honor system made such behavior a great shame. During the years, more
than once Chinese friends have told me that living in the United States made
them more honest and honorable persons.

In
Potsdam, we bought tickets to see both the old and new palaces. When we walked
across the grounds to the New Palace's entrance and presented our tickets, the female
guard told us—quite impatiently—that we needed a stamp. We walked a few hundred
meters to another ticket office, got a stamp, returned and were admitted.

It
was a stamp-thirsty ticketing scheme. The requirement for getting extra stamps
on our tickets at different locations again reminded me the China I came from,
when any little thing would require a lengthy stamp-tour to get approved. It made me suspect that Potsdam belonged to
East Germany in the not-so-remote past.
For the same token, I also suspected that Berlin's railway company had belonged
to East Germany.

Upon
returning to our hotel that evening, an online research verified both.

On
Friday we took a 6-hour walking tour provided by http://www.brewersberlintours.com/. Compared to Thursday's unpleasant experience (
thanks to the railway company), the walking tour was more than a great success. The ticket cost only 15 Euro each – Berlin's
low-cost of living was unexpected to me. Some people bought tickets online in
advance, but most didn't. Our tour
guide, a knowledgeable and passionate Israeli, told us to pay at the end of the
tour. Apparently he didn't worry about
anyone escaping half-way. (As a matter of fact, no one did, and all fifteen of
us in the group gave him generous tips.)

Toward
the end of the walking tour, we stopped across the street from an enormous grey
building, said to have a thousand windows (see photo below). It had been both East Berlin's and the Nazi's
government building, and now hosts the country's Finance Ministry. Its numerous windows, our tour guide said,
were meant to intimidate citizens and remind them that they were small and being
watched all the time.

There
are many wonderful things in Berlin, with great historical significance. The
holocaust memorial is very moving, and the architecture and museums are noteworthy.
Still, for Bob and me, it felt like something was missing or out of place.

Perhaps
it's worth noting that, after the train trip to Potsdam, we never used our
Berlin WelcomeCards again.

-When it comes to forming opinions on a
person or a matter, don't use group thinking;

How well said! How fundamentally down-to-earth these principles are to every individual. Those born later than our generation, those who are lucky enough to not have experienced the Cultural Revolution – a time when mob mentality played to its extreme – might not get the urgent point or understand the importance of these principles. I dare say, chances are, people will more often do exactly the opposite. It's human nature; it's the kind of human nature we need to be on guard for and fight against.

The friend then adds:

As long as human nature doesn't change, it is possible that the
Cultural Revolution will be repeated. If we perceive any sign of that tendency,
we must try to stop it regardless of personal dangers. This is the mission that history entrusts to
those of us who were there.

What a courageous thing to say.

On a different but related note, I will be in Berlin on July 13 to participate in a panel discussion as part of the Robert Bosch Stiftung's "Engaging with China" program. The topic is "50 years after the Cultural Revolution – how dealing with the past is shaping China's future."

Tuesday, March 1, 2016

On Saturday, Feb.
20, I walked in Boston Common about 11 am, in time to see a large group of
Chinese Americans gathering by the Brewer Fountain in front of the gold-domed Massachusetts
State House. Behind the crowd, a man in a
black ski jacket and a woman in blue jeans quietly placed a small, home-made memorial
under a tree. They carefully laid down pine
twigs and flower bouquets on the lawn, and set up a cardboard sign with
hand-written words:"TRIBUTE TO AKAI GURLEY"

People came from as far away as Rhode Island to demonstrate in Boston, responding to former New York policeman Peter Liang's conviction. The majority of the participants were middle-aged,
and quite a few brought children with them. Led by a Boston University
Professor named Wang Hua, the first thing the demonstrators did together was observe
one minute of silence in mourning of Akai Gurley and as an expression of
condolences to his family.

I watched them from
a distance. I had decided from the very beginning to stay out of the mass
rally, and advised my friends to do the same. In addition to personal reasons, I
was also concerned about possible adverse consequences of racial tension. But I
would be surprised this time.

My first surprise
was that a friend, Hong Jiang, a former IT professional who had been skeptical about the
rally early on, brought with her two hand-made placards. One read,
"Condolences to Mr. Gurley's family," and the other "Fair Trial
for Peter Liang." She said she decided
to get involved because she really didn't want the rally sending the wrong
message to the public.

As it turns out,
these were the two main messages of the rallies across the country that day. Sadly, however, the mainstream media, and many in
their readership as well, seem to have seen only the second message or, worse still, to characterize
the demonstrations as a
"square-off" between the Asian and black communities. Few recognized
that the Chinese American community as a whole has emerged from its customary
quietness to make a collective bow to the victim's family, to express regrets
and sorrow, to issue a profound apology, and to acknowledge the failure of Liang's
defense team for not delivering an apology until after the verdict was read. Such
a collective apology is something unheard of in the 190-year history of Chinese
Americans.

The consensus on apologizing
was not manifest at the outset. On WeChat, I early on saw an ambivalent
question: Are we begging for leniency?
In the week between the verdict and the demonstrations, I watched on my
cellphone people debating passionately, sometimes fiercely, on whether mass
rallies should be held and how. There
were no authorities anywhere; anyone could propose any idea, and people took or
rejected ideas at their own discretion.
Despite endless arguments, some sort of convergence—though in no way unanimity—did
seem to appear at the end. One example: inappropriate slogans such as
"Support Peter Liang" stayed around for a while but were ultimately
rejected by the majority. "Support
him for what? For shooting?" the question from a random person had made
others think twice.

As a rookie cop, Peter
Liang made a grave mistake on the evening of November 20, 2014, on the 8th
floor of a dark stairwell in a Brooklyn public housing complex, when a bullet discharged
from his gun, ricocheted
off the wall, and fatally struck Akai
Gurley one floor below. Though all evidence points to the fact that neither man
was aware of the presence of the other at the time, and that even
the victim did
not immediately realize he himself was hit until he ran down two more
floors and collapsed on the 5th floor landing, Liang, as well as his
partner, made a further mistake by not performing CPR for the dying man after
they saw what happened minutes later. While Liang's defense team had argued
that a devastated and not well trained Liang was incapable of handling such a
crisis, an unarguable fact is that a young man's life was lost because of him,
and for that Liang must bear the responsibility.

Yet it is also a
fact that the tragedy was a horrible accident, made even more tragic by the
extremely low probability that a ricocheting bullet would strike someone in the
heart. As Ken Thompson, the Brooklyn DA who prosecuted Liang, said in a video
interview on Feb. 19, the day before the demonstrations, "I do not
believe that Peter Liang intentionally killed Akai Gurley. We have never said
that."

An accident is not
the best example of evilness. An individual who caused an accident without
intent should not be symbolized for political causes or be given the harshest
punishment. As far as I can tell, this is what pushed Chinese Americans to the
streets on Feb. 20. But as they sought fairness for a member of their own, it
also became clear to them that "fairness" might not mean the same
thing to those on the side of the victim. Thus, as a grassroots movement, the
Peter Liang demonstrations ran into a dilemma. That dilemma, embodied in the
two slogans carried by my friend, also became part of the rallies.

On the grass of
Boston Common, I asked a demonstrator, who identified herself as a housewife, why
she brought her children here. She
replied in Chinese, "I want them to know we are a minority. They have to know that unfair things happen to us because we are a minority." She paused, and
then added somewhat ambivalently, "But we don't want our black friends to
think we are against them. They are a minority too. We are both disadvantaged groups." A park ranger on
horse attracted children who came with their parents. The kids wanted to pat the
horse. They wanted to take pictures with
the handsome policeman.

I couldn't help but
wonder: when Peter Liang, at age five, witnessed her mother being robbed on the
street, and vowed to protect her when he grew up, was it the mighty image of a
policeman like this that inspired his dream career? How could he have known there's so much behind
a beautiful image!

By the Brewer
Fountain, a woman speaker stood on a bench and called on Chinese
Americans to actively participate in public affairs. The crowd responded with
foot stamping while shouting in unison: "Vote! Vote! Vote!" Hong Jiang, who became one of the provisional organizers with the BU professor, spoke next. She told people to care not only about our own community, but also all other minority groups.

After seven or eight men and women made impromptu speeches, people began to sing "God
Bless America." A man with a
singer's voice held a megaphone and led the chorus. I was surprised that many
remembered the lyrics; those who didn't hummed along.

As the demonstrators
paraded along the outmost ring inside the large park, the procession stretched for
more than half a mile. I asked the park ranger on horse how many people he
thought there were.

"More than
2000," he said, impressed. "I thought there'd be 50. That's the estimate on the permit."

"Is it okay
there are so many?" I asked.

"Oh yeah, "
he said, "perfectly fine. It's a good thing."

The parade marched
past my camera, shouting slogans. Suddenly, a white man standing next to me in
the audience ran to the parade and stopped a woman holding a sign, on it were
the words "Free Peter Liang."

"Where is he
being held?" the man, who later told me his name was Ed, asked her. The
woman looked puzzled. Several others came around and tried to explain, but Ed
cut them short. "You can't ask to free someone who's not being imprisoned,"
he said.

This slogan, in
fact, had been one of those deemed inappropriate by most—albeit for different
reasons than Ed's—during the WeChat discussions before the demonstration. Many
seemed to want leniency for Peter Liang, not exactly "free," but
unsure what term would be fair.

I
spotted another friend, also an IT professional, at the tail of the parade. I
asked her why she came to demonstrate. "If we didn't," she said in a Sichuan
accent, "Peter Liang would be locked up for 15 years!"